The Tin Man

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Here’s a Q&A about why ushers at many Broadway shows now scan the bar codes on your tickets instead of tearing them. Tidbit:

[T]he scanners record exactly when each patron enters the theatre, allowing Telecharge to amass and analyze data on when people tend to show up. What have they found so far? A lot of the data has confirmed conventional wisdom. For instance, at plays, which tend to attract native New Yorkers, lots of people show up five minutes before curtain. At musicals, which attract more tourists, people tend to show up earlier.

12:45 PM | 1 drop of oil

Monday, July 7, 2008

I know this is the fourth [title of show] post I’ve written in the last few days.

But I was just sitting at my cubicle listening to “Die Vampire, Die” on my iPod, and I got to the part that goes

The last vampire is the mother of all vampires and that is the vampire of despair. It’ll wake you up at 4am to say things like:

Who do you think you’re kidding?
You look like a fool.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be good enough.

Why is it that if some dude walked up to me on the subway platform and said these things, I’d think he was a mentally ill asshole, but if the vampire inside my head says it, it’s the voice of reason.

and I started silently crying.

Now I’m typing this entry and it’s happening again.

One thing I noticed when I stopped taking Celexa a few months ago after 4 1/2 years is that the spigots got unblocked. It first happened to me while watching “Enchanted,” of all things. I’d forgotten what it was like for tears to well up so easily. I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten.

Emotions seem much more feelable to me again these days.

4:15 PM | 3 drops of oil

Thoughts swirling through my head today on only a few hours of sleep. Once again I woke up around 4:00 this morning. Why does this keep happening? We must get a new mattress and an actual bed.

As I drifted in and out of sleep I kept dreaming about [title of show]. Still thinking about the first preview the other night. I can’t get these lyrics out of my head today:

I’d rather be
Nine people’s favorite thing
Than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing

I’m still thinking about our holiday weekend. It was really nice — we did at least one fun thing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which had not been the norm for us lately.

On Thursday night I opened up my cardboard box of memorabilia. I’d taped it up when we moved last fall and hadn’t opened it since. I wanted to dig through my old journals, but I wound up spending the evening looking through a few hundred photographs that have been sitting in various drugstore envelopes for years. Then I pored over words I’d written almost exactly 10 years ago.

On Friday afternoon we saw WALL-E. I loved it. Can’t recommend it highly enough. One of the most poetic and beautiful animated films I’ve ever seen. I want my own WALL-E to keep as a pet. I also realized that the shape of his head is similar to E.T.’s. I wonder if that was intentional.

After the movie, we went to a Fourth of July party at our friends’ place and watched the fireworks from their roof. It was raining, and the rain weighed down the smoke over the East River and kept it from dissipating, so most of the fireworks were obscured. That was kind of disappointing.

Saturday night was [title of show], and yesterday afternoon we went to my parents’ house for a little family hangout. My dad grilled up burgers, chicken skewers, and steak, and we ate outside. My parents have done lots of gardening this summer and there were flowers everywhere, as well as a few bird feeders that attracted lots of birds (and some squirrels and, I think, a couple of rats). My parents’ backyard is surrounded by tall trees, which were fully green in mid-summer bloom. It was such a nice respite from the city. I think human beings need to commune with nature — it touches something inherent in us. It grounds us and reminds us where we came from. It slows us down, re-synchronizes us with the clock of the world. Trees, plants and animals are so much realer and truer than concrete and plaster and pixels and plastic.

Alas, all weekends come to an end. But I don’t want to waste this summer like I usually do. Matt and I should try to get away somewhere, even if just for a couple of days. I want to slow down and appreciate summer for once.

12:25 PM | 1 drop of oil

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Susan of [tos] blogs about the reaction to last night’s preview: “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”

8:56 PM | oil me

Saturday, July 5, 2008

We just got back from the first Broadway preview of [title of show]. It was a night at the theater I’ll never forget.

[title of show] is a musical about its own creation. It was written for the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2004, transferred to an Off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theater, and led to a series of YouTube videos about the gang’s quest to get their show on Broadway. (More here.) It’s developed a big cult following among the theater geek set. We first saw it at the Vineyard a couple of years ago, we’d both watched all their videos, and we’ve listened to the cast album a lot, so a few weeks ago we decided to get some tickets for the first preview.

I have never heard cheering in a Broadway theater as loud as I heard in the Lyceum tonight. It was overwhelming. The audience was clearly filled with fans. From beginning to end, the audience screamed and shouting and clapped its heart out for the five people up there. It was a wall of sound.

I felt bad for the elderly couple sitting next to me. They seemed thoroughly baffled. I was next to the husband, who was using the theater’s hearing equipment. At the very beginning, when Larry Pressgrove, the music director, who is actually part of the show, walked out onto the stage, and the audience erupted in cheers, the man leaned over to me and asked who the guy and why everyone was cheering for him.

For the rest of the audience, it was lots of fun. And since the show is about trying to get to Broadway, and this was the first preview on Broadway, it was poignant. The audience spontaneously broke into a standing ovation at the end of the second-to-last song, and it must have lasted a good minute and a half. Who knows what the four principals, Jeff, Hunter, Susan, and Heidi, thought of this. Their expressions were frozen on their faces as they waited for the ovation to die down, but they must have been overwhelmed. During the final number, which is a low-key, poignant piece, a couple of their voices broke as they sang, and Susan’s eyes were filled with tears.

I don’t know how run-of-the-mill Broadway audiences will respond to it. They certainly won’t respond like the audience did tonight. That’s why it was so much fun to be there tonight.

There are a few kinks they need to work out with some of the new material. But the show remains clever and witty and endearing, and it’s filled with inside theater jokes. If you’re a theater geek — or any sort of creative type, for that matter — you’ll appreciate the show and its message.

11:50 PM | 6 drops of oil

Friday, July 4, 2008

As of today, there are 200 days left in the Bush presidency.

We’re getting there!

11:21 AM | oil me

Jesse Helms has died.

I emailed a friend of mine:

I rarely feel this way about someone, but may he rot in hell, if it exists.

He wrote back:

Or if it doesn’t, may he have to be reincarnated as a crippled black Jewish lesbian living in Mississippi.

Amen.

11:18 AM | 2 drops of oil

Thursday, July 3, 2008

This new book looks really cool and it’s right up my alley.

11:48 AM | oil me

We watched The American President last night. It was on TV the other night so we decided to TiVo it. I’ve seen it many times, and I always enjoy it. But it’s always jarring to see Martin Sheen playing the chief of staff instead of the president. It’s fun to look for other precursors of The West Wing (both the movie and the TV show were written by Aaron Sorkin, don’t you know). For instance, Anna Deavere Smith and Joshua Malina are in both the movie and the show. And there’s a politician named Stackhouse — governor in the movie, filibustering senator on TV. Here are more similarities. Huh. I never realized that Sydney Wade’s sister is played by the same actress who played Ellie Bartlett.

I’ve always wanted to write a paper about how movie portrayals of the President of the United States changed in the 1990s. When I was a kid, it seemed that whenever a movie featured the president, he was played by some bland, gray-haired, middle-aged man, and he was never a main character. He’d just appear for a few minutes, just long enough to make the agonizing-yet-tough decision to bomb Country X or to shake his fist and refuse to give in to the demands of the villains. He’d stand there in shirtsleeves and suspenders, make his gray-haired decision, and then we’d get back to Jack Ryan or Superman or whoever.

But in the 1990s, Bill Clinton took office. He was from a new generation, more touchy-feely, more idealistic, and the popular conception of the presidency changed as the barrier between public and president fell away. (Boxers or briefs?) This shift was reflected in the movies. Suddenly there were movies about being the president, movies from the president’s point of view. He was now portrayed as younger, friendlier, more idealistic, more vigorous. We were invited to identify with him, root for him. In 1993, there was Dave: Kevin Kline impersonates the president and tries to fix Washington. In 1995, The American President: the idealistic, witty liberal. In 1996, Independence Day: the president flies a fighter jet! In 1997, Air Force One: president as action hero!

I know there’s a paper in there somewhere.

11:00 AM | 2 drops of oil

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Jesus Christ. Okay, I think my site is back to normal now. I had more problems yesterday, but if you can read this, then things are fine.

11:38 AM | 2 drops of oil

Monday, June 30, 2008

Well, that was fun!

My apologies to anybody who’s tried to access my site since Friday. My site’s been down for four days and it finally came back up this evening. I ran into a little snafu while trying to renew my domain name. It was frustrating. But things seem back on track now.

If you’ve sent emails to me at tinmanic.com since Friday, I haven’t received them. So you might want to try sending them again.

Again, my apologies, and I’m just glad my site’s back up.

11:26 PM | 1 drop of oil

Friday, June 27, 2008

I recently finished reading Sean Wilentz’s new book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. It’s about the rise of the conservative movement from the post-Watergate era to the present, with its culmination in the Reagan presidency.

I didn’t notice this right away, but it eventually struck me that the era covered in The Age of Reagan coincides almost exactly with my lifetime. I was born in December 1973, at the height of Watergate. I was an infant when Nixon resigned. I used to think I was a “Watergate baby,” until I learned that the term “Watergate babies” actually refers to the 75 Democrats elected to Congress in 1974 in the wake of the scandal. But I still like applying the term to those of us born around that time. I feel some solidarity with people who are my age or pretty close to it, who were in the same grade of school at the same time as me, who experienced world events at the same age I did.

It got me wondering about when I first discovered “the news.” What’s the first news story I remember?

I think it was the Iranian hostage crisis. I remember sitting in my parents’ bed one morning in the late ’70s. On TV there were men with white hoods covering their heads. This was a striking image for a little kid to see, and it scared me. Did I see something similar to this?

The next news event I remember is the 1979 gas shortage. My mom packed me into the car with some sandwiches on a spring (summer?) day and we drove to the nearby gas station, where we waited on a long line that stretched around the block, everyone waiting to get gas.

Next: the 1980 election. I remember being in my first grade classroom and looking at the latest edition of the Weekly Reader, the weekly newsmagazine for kids. On the cover were pictures of the three major presidential candidates, each in an oval: President Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson.

Next I remember the 1984 election. In my fifth grade classroom, we had a mock vote. One student portrayed Reagan and the other portrayed Mondale, and each articulated the candidate’s positions. Then we voted. Out of 20-plus kids in the class, everyone voted for Reagan except me. I voted for Mondale.

From then on, I started to become more aware. Live Aid. The Challenger disaster. Chernobyl. Iran-Contra. The 1988 election, where every candidate seemed to have a one-syllable name. (Bush. Dole. Gore. Hart. Haig. Kemp.)

What are the earliest news events you remember?

3:41 PM | 2 drops of oil

Thursday, June 26, 2008

The problem with constitutional interpretation is that we often confuse the question of what the law should be with the question of what the Constitution says the law is. Non-lawyers often confuse their policy preferences with constitutional interpretation. Actually, legal scholars do it too. Otherwise there would be no such things as 5-4 Supreme Court decisions.

Therefore, when you take a complicated issue, such as gun control, where there are decent arguments on both sides, and you throw in the task of trying to interpret a constitutional provision that is both (1) written in eighteenth-century language and (2) confusingly worded even for the eighteenth century, it’s easy to throw your hands up and say, “How the hell do I know?”

That’s what I sometimes do.

4:47 PM | 2 drops of oil

A couple of weeks ago, Justice Scalia, in dissenting from the Supreme Court decision stating that Guantanamo detainees have habeas corpus rights, lamented that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

Today he wrote an opinion finding a broad right to own handguns, a decision that, one could argue, “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

Maybe, maybe not, but thanks to Slate for pointing out the contradiction. If it is one.

I don’t know whether the ruling is correct or not. The opinion and two dissents run to more than 150 pages, and they’re unusually chock-full of scholarly, historical analysis. And we’re talking about a sentence that was written more than 200 years ago in a vastly different world with vastly different writing styles and vastly different guns.

This is what happens when you try to interpret one of the world’s oldest functioning constitutions. Do other countries, with newer constitutions, have this problem? Do other countries’ judges have to interpret such sentences as, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”? Let alone the crappy sentence structure, what do the individual words mean?

It’s worth noting that the D.C. law at issue was pretty extreme. It banned the possession of handguns in your own home, and all other types of guns in your home had to remain either unloaded and dissassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. The majority opinion has narrow effect — it strikes down this law, but it doesn’t discuss other types of gun laws, including that prevent criminals or the mentally ill, etc., from having guns.

Scalia ends his opinion as follows:

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns… But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

What happens if we change a few words?

We are aware of the problem of terrorism in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that the stripping of habeas corpus rights is a solution. The Constitution leaves the government a variety of tools for combating that problem… But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the stripping of habeas corpus rights except in times of rebellion or invasion. Undoubtedly some think that the right of habeas corpus is outmoded in a society where the threat of terrorism is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce constitutional rights extinct.

Who’s right?

Who knows?

Isn’t Supreme Court analysis fun?

3:50 PM | 2 drops of oil

I think my body’s making up for not getting much sleep the other night, because I’ve been having vivid dreams lately.

Last night I dreamed that my brother and I were riding a New Jersey Transit train into Manhattan. The train was moving slowly and we weren’t sure way. Then the train stopped, and some ticket-takers came down the aisle and told us that it was a hijacking. We saw that they had guns. One of them walked down the aisle carrying a big garbage bag and asked everyone to empty the cash from their wallets into it.

I took out my wallet and removed the cash — several twenties — and put it in the bag. I realized I still had a dollar bill left in there that the guy hadn’t seen, and I was going to keep it, but then I thought better of it and took that out too.

Then my brother, being a badass, pressed a very visible silent alarm button. It was above the seats, just like the “request stop” button is on buses. He pressed it for several seconds. I was sure he was going to get shot, but nothing happened.

Then the crew was done robbing us, and they drove the train down a side track. It stopped on a street corner in a country neighborhood so we could get off. Tall trees, overgrown grass, a house at the corner. We all jumped off the train in a civilized way, but my heart was racing and I couldn’t wait to get away from there.

Later in the dream, someone told me that I was expected at the police station, where I was supposed to recount my story about what had happened. But I knew that the policemen were in league with the train crew and I refused to go, because I thought they were going to do something bad to me.

I guess authority figures scare me?

I also dreamed that the news media reported that Joe Lieberman had died while on a trip in Afghanistan, and I was glad, because he wouldn’t be able to help McCain anymore or speak at the Republican National Convention.

3:00 PM | 1 drop of oil

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Everything is Illuminated is growing on me. I followed this advice. The book has its charms, and it also helps to be reading it when you’ve had more than three and a half hours of sleep.

1:24 PM | oil me

Monday, June 23, 2008

After trying to decide what to read, I wound up buying Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Yeah, I missed that hipster train by about six years, but I figured better late than never. I prefer to read amazingly-reviewed novels when they’re new, or at least when they’ve just come out in paperback. As for the other kinds of books: if I see one more 20- or 30-something woman reading Eat, Pray, Love on the subway, I’m gonna hurl. For all I know, it’s an excellent book. I just can’t stand to see it anymore.

So — I started Everything is Illuminated last night and I’m 20 pages into it.

Does it get better?

Maybe I’m in the wrong mood for it, but it seems to be trying a bit too hard. Or maybe I’m just over pomo fiction. Maybe I should have picked something with more conventional prose. I was going to read Arthur and George. If this book doesn’t pan out, I may pick that one up.

Or maybe I just need sleep. I feel rotten today. We went to bed at midnight last night, but I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. Got out of bed, got back into bed; repeated a couple more times. It didn’t help that the sun was rising by 5 a.m., since it’s the fourth-longest day of the year. (The solstice was on Friday!)

I was going to stay home today and try to sleep, but I still couldn’t sleep, so after two hours I gave up and came into the office, because the idea of sitting alone at home on this dark and cloudy day, feeling droopy, with nothing to do and nobody to talk to, filled me with dread.

In the last few weeks I’ve woken up in the middle of the night more frequently than usual. It tends to happen around 4:00. I wonder if it’s a sign of depression or a sign that I need new pillows or that we need a new mattress — or an actual bed, since we don’t actually have one. (Wow, look at the nested structure of that last sentence.)

Zzzzzzzz…

1:09 PM | 3 drops of oil

Sunday, June 22, 2008

According to the New York Times, some people at NBC were annoyed that Tim Russert’s death showed up on his Wikipedia entry before NBC could notify everyone in his family.

Looking at the detailed records of editing changes recorded by Wikipedia, it quickly emerged that the changes came from Internet Broadcasting Services, a company in St. Paul, Minn., that provides Web services to a variety of companies, including local NBC TV stations.

An I.B.S. spokeswoman said on Friday that “a junior-level employee made updates to the Wikipedia page upon learning of Mr. Russert’s passing, thinking it was public record.” She added that the company had “taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC.” NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.

Fired? For updating a Wikipedia page with true information? That seems excessive. Still:

One of the principles of the site is No Original Research — every fact must have appeared somewhere reputable before it can be repeated. (This cause can seem an obsession as stickler editors patrol the site flagging unattributed facts with the label “citation needed.”

Here’s the Wikipedia page on the “no original research” policy, if anyone wants to check it out.

I guess it makes sense that you should be able to cite a source. But what if the employee had a citable source? If the employee was truly fired, presumably it’s not because the employee violated a Wikipedia policy but because the employee posted true information on Wikipedia before the network wanted it to.

The New York Post was apparently the first news organization to report Russert’s death — only about 20 minutes after someone first updated Wikipedia. So an employee was fired for updating Wikipedia 20 minutes before the news went public.

The New York Post itself broke the news about 20 minutes before NBC publicly announced Russert’s death. So did the New York Times. Did the Times or the Post verify that all of Russert’s family members had been notified before they posted the news? If not, has anyone been fired at those organizations?

In the internet era, it seems wrong to fire someone for revealing information 38 minutes before the news “officially” breaks. Whatever “officially” means in this context. Granted, I’d hate to find out about a close family member’s death through Wikipedia (not that I can imagine that happening — I don’t have any famous relatives). But… I don’t know. This just doesn’t seem right.

8:13 PM | 1 drop of oil

Friday, June 20, 2008

I’m in between books and it’s one of the worst feelings I know. I love having a book to read, but I get picky. I wander among the aisles and tables of the Strand, and I go to the library, and I browse on Amazon, and nothing appeals to me. I wind up having so much trouble finding a book to read that I begin to wonder if I only like the idea of having a book to read.

It’s like I have an itch and can’t figure out how to scratch it.

In the last few years I’ve given up on fiction and have been reading a lot of history. But yesterday after work I was at the Strand and thought it might be nice to read a novel for a change. The only problem is that I don’t know what novel to read. I keep looking for something that grabs me on the first page and I can’t seem to find something that I know will keep my interest for 200+ pages.

Maybe this ask.metafilter thread will help me. Or maybe this is just a hopeless task.

3:22 PM | 7 drops of oil

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Some Virginia conservatives are worried about what gay marriage in California might do. It might… get other people used to the idea!

Moore and Lux had never heard of West Hollywood. Only [George] Takei was a familiar face - but the notion that Mr. Sulu was now something of a gay activist just made matters worse.

“You watch this celebration, and I honestly worry about indoctrination,” Lux said. “It’s like the frog in the water syndrome,” Moore added in agreement. “You know, the frog doesn’t realize the water around it is heating up until it’s boiled. I worry that Americans will get used to these images and they’ll throw up their hands and say, ‘Who cares?’ ”

You mean they’ll see gay couples getting married and they’ll realize that it doesn’t cause any harm?

Wow. I actually agree with them. Except replace “worry” with “hope.”

Their argument against gay marriage has been reduced to “we can’t allow it or else people will be okay with it.”

They are intellectually bankrupt.

10:10 PM | 2 drops of oil